The list was pulled from filtering software, set to "block illegal material only".
I would be far more concerned if the list is a superset of the ACMA list than if Stephen Conroy was flat out lying, since that would mean that a product vendor is taking the opportunity to tell me what I'm not allowed to read, on top of the Government giving themselves that right.
Of course, if the Aussie Guvmint had asked a favour of the DHS folks (heh "DHS" is a courier service here in Oz), someone could have just "accidentally" cut a few power cables to the data center.
Heck, it's (almost) happened to people playing EVE online, why wouldn't a real-world Government do the same thing?
Would you count it as force majeure if a company selling ski tours was unable to provide their tour service one winter due to extremely high rainfall?
Would you count it as force majeure if another nation rolled their tanks in and killed all your debtors?
Why isn't it force majeure when the entire nation goes bankrupt? Do you have a contingency plan in place for all of your debtors going bankrupt in the same week?
The only impenetrable part of EVE Online is making friends in the first two weeks of starting, or ending up lost and alone.
Everything else is an adventure in learning =)
It's worth noting that some of the sales of EVE online in a box will be going to existing customers who want the nifty Interbus Shuttle (unique in-game item), or the cheaper 60 day game time code included in the box.
This is what will keep bricks-and-mortar stores open - hardcopy publishers convincing game producers to put in special extras for people who support their home country's economy:)
Collector's Edition pets in World of Warcraft, Interbus Shuttle in EVE Online. They're all little things that won't affect the game, that all tie into this "merchandising" fad.
I will, of course, only be buying the EVE Online box from a games store where someone in the store can actually tell me about the game. If they can't even tell me "internet spaceships" or know that there's a mega-alliance called "Goonswarm", no sale.
If they can mention two news items of epic proportion (eg: POS exploit, BoB dissolution) from the last six months, I'll buy two copies.
PDF is to PostScript as ZIP (or tar | gzip) is to a file system.
The reason for moving from PostScript to PDF is that when you give someone a PDF file, it's like giving them the source code for your program along with copies of all the exact versions of the libraries you compiled against.
There is no such thing as "passive" rendering - PostScript is a programming language which is handled by an interpreter, and PostScript is used inside PDF documents to describe the actual contents. The closest I can think of to "passive" rendering is a bitmap image like GIF, which would never ever have a buffer overflow problem, would it?
Even in the world of processing text files, there are still opportunities for problems - naive implementations of a CSV parser for example might not handle quotes and embedded commas the same way. This would result in data corruption. Even worse, if the naive implementation tries reading the columns into a particular fixed-size block of memory you could have overrun errors due to the assumption of strings being "small".
Nothing that happens on a computer is "passive". It's all active, and involves interpretation of a sequence of numbers into some other sequence of numbers in video memory that just happens to look to humans like something to view or read. Along the way there are assumptions made, mistakes can happen, and even a CSV file can turn into a vector for attack.
Good music has an emotional depth. Good music is not mass-produced formula fluff.
Click tracks lead to formula fluff, and even the good artists who record to a click track sound dead and mechanical.
Flaws are what make us human. Trying to remove the flaws puts the music into the uncanny valley, in my opinion. Humans trying to be machines or machines trying to be humans, which way around is it? Either way doesn't work for me.
Or get a drag-and-drop application that will convert to the m4a format, change the extension and import it to the Ringtones section of iTunes automagically?
See? Computers are good for automating tedious and repetitive operations:)
Ubuntu and Mac OS X are the two operating systems I can think of where things "just work" when you plug them in.
Windows is the operating system where plugging something in will break Windows unless you've previously installed the right driver for the thing you're about to plug in.
I plug my Nikon into my Mac and the Mac helpfully shows the contents of the CF card. I plug the same Nikon into a Windows box and it doesn't give me any option except to install the drivers. The Nikon is just presenting itself to the computer as a USB storage device.
I can't even plug my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 into a Windows machine without being prompted to install drivers.
Windows doesn't "just work" except when you replace "just" with "barely".
My local Jaycar, Dick Smith or Bunnings all carry "security screwdriver" kits. Those screws are only used as a question to the user, "do you really want to be futzing with this?"
heh heh... "sorry officer, I can't stop this phone clicking - some bug in the Section 75322 code, you know the one that insists that a camera makes a clicking noise? Apparently the manufacture didn't get around to reading the rest of the sentence..."
Then they came for those whose Digitla SLRs did not click when taking a picture through a 600mm telephoto lens, and I did not speak up because I did not own a 600mm telephoto lens.
50/50 is the worst possible mix, short of 50%-1 for two parties and a couple of independents. Then it's the independents who run the government.
I nice mix would be 30/30/30 of major parties (Democrats, Republicans, Greens), with a handful of those nasty religious types who feel that it is their duty to interfere with the Government, and suddenly you don't even need the Reps and the Dems to agree with each other on anything anymore, and the independents can't hold the Government hostage.
I think you'll find that iiNet are being sued because the movie studios are the ones motivating Sen. Conroy to persist with the stupid clean feed idea.
"If only you had Cleanfeed," the studios will claim, "your customers wouldn't be able to pirate our movies!"
So now if you object to the Cleanfeed, not only are you a child abuser, you're a movie pirate too!
I've tried Ubuntu. The little niggly details keep me coming back to my MacBook. Little things like the damn Ubuntu laptop won't go to sleep and stay asleep until I wake it. Little things like taking twice as long to boot. Little things like the WiFi indicator not lighting up when the WiFi radio is turned on. Little things like the UI being loosely based on Mac OS X in the first place, except with much less UI consistency.
It's the little things that drive you mad. I can go quite happily wearing last year's fashions for a decade, but dammit you put a pebble in my shoe I'm going to get cranky aren't I?
I'll simply keep buying Macs as I always have, and I'll keep not buying prerecorded movies like I always have.
Don't shoot the messenger, and all that.
Just be aware that while Hitler wrote the first sentence, the rest of that quote is from a Rabbi writing a fictional letter by Hitler, writing from the afterlife to his colleague Julius Streicher.
If iiNet shows how useless filtering really is in a real-world environment as opposed to a sterile lab environment, Conroy will just claim that they weren't trying hard enough. Especially given iiNet's public attitude towards filtering, Conroy's argument will simply be that iiNet set out to sabotage the project.
Mandatory Internet censorship is going to happen here, like it or lump it.
Of course, you know the way that it will happen is that the single-player mode will work up until the final encounter, at which point it's revealed that you should have paid the $20 to unlock that NPC way back at the beginning of the game because they're pivotal to the successful completion of the final encounter.
Can you imagine having to pay $20 to unlock Imoen or Jeheira in the Baldur's Gate series?
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The list was pulled from filtering software, set to "block illegal material only".
I would be far more concerned if the list is a superset of the ACMA list than if Stephen Conroy was flat out lying, since that would mean that a product vendor is taking the opportunity to tell me what I'm not allowed to read, on top of the Government giving themselves that right.
Of course, if the Aussie Guvmint had asked a favour of the DHS folks (heh "DHS" is a courier service here in Oz), someone could have just "accidentally" cut a few power cables to the data center.
Heck, it's (almost) happened to people playing EVE online, why wouldn't a real-world Government do the same thing?
Would you count it as force majeure if a company selling ski tours was unable to provide their tour service one winter due to extremely high rainfall?
Would you count it as force majeure if another nation rolled their tanks in and killed all your debtors?
Why isn't it force majeure when the entire nation goes bankrupt? Do you have a contingency plan in place for all of your debtors going bankrupt in the same week?
The only impenetrable part of EVE Online is making friends in the first two weeks of starting, or ending up lost and alone. Everything else is an adventure in learning =)
It's worth noting that some of the sales of EVE online in a box will be going to existing customers who want the nifty Interbus Shuttle (unique in-game item), or the cheaper 60 day game time code included in the box.
This is what will keep bricks-and-mortar stores open - hardcopy publishers convincing game producers to put in special extras for people who support their home country's economy :)
Collector's Edition pets in World of Warcraft, Interbus Shuttle in EVE Online. They're all little things that won't affect the game, that all tie into this "merchandising" fad.
I will, of course, only be buying the EVE Online box from a games store where someone in the store can actually tell me about the game. If they can't even tell me "internet spaceships" or know that there's a mega-alliance called "Goonswarm", no sale.
If they can mention two news items of epic proportion (eg: POS exploit, BoB dissolution) from the last six months, I'll buy two copies.
PDF is to PostScript as ZIP (or tar | gzip) is to a file system.
The reason for moving from PostScript to PDF is that when you give someone a PDF file, it's like giving them the source code for your program along with copies of all the exact versions of the libraries you compiled against.
There is no such thing as "passive" rendering - PostScript is a programming language which is handled by an interpreter, and PostScript is used inside PDF documents to describe the actual contents. The closest I can think of to "passive" rendering is a bitmap image like GIF, which would never ever have a buffer overflow problem, would it?
Even in the world of processing text files, there are still opportunities for problems - naive implementations of a CSV parser for example might not handle quotes and embedded commas the same way. This would result in data corruption. Even worse, if the naive implementation tries reading the columns into a particular fixed-size block of memory you could have overrun errors due to the assumption of strings being "small".
Nothing that happens on a computer is "passive". It's all active, and involves interpretation of a sequence of numbers into some other sequence of numbers in video memory that just happens to look to humans like something to view or read. Along the way there are assumptions made, mistakes can happen, and even a CSV file can turn into a vector for attack.
Good music has an emotional depth. Good music is not mass-produced formula fluff. Click tracks lead to formula fluff, and even the good artists who record to a click track sound dead and mechanical. Flaws are what make us human. Trying to remove the flaws puts the music into the uncanny valley, in my opinion. Humans trying to be machines or machines trying to be humans, which way around is it? Either way doesn't work for me.
Drums and Bass are called "Rhythm" for a reason.
Or get a drag-and-drop application that will convert to the m4a format, change the extension and import it to the Ringtones section of iTunes automagically?
See? Computers are good for automating tedious and repetitive operations :)
Ubuntu and Mac OS X are the two operating systems I can think of where things "just work" when you plug them in.
Windows is the operating system where plugging something in will break Windows unless you've previously installed the right driver for the thing you're about to plug in.
I plug my Nikon into my Mac and the Mac helpfully shows the contents of the CF card. I plug the same Nikon into a Windows box and it doesn't give me any option except to install the drivers. The Nikon is just presenting itself to the computer as a USB storage device.
I can't even plug my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 into a Windows machine without being prompted to install drivers.
Windows doesn't "just work" except when you replace "just" with "barely".
My local Jaycar, Dick Smith or Bunnings all carry "security screwdriver" kits. Those screws are only used as a question to the user, "do you really want to be futzing with this?"
So it's okay to ship laptops by courier, but not the batteries? Are you sure you know what you're talking about?
What about the sales they'll make due to the unibody mac having no visible seams?
I used to be a road warrior. I never took spare batteries, just an in-car charger to go along with the wall-wart.
heh heh... "sorry officer, I can't stop this phone clicking - some bug in the Section 75322 code, you know the one that insists that a camera makes a clicking noise? Apparently the manufacture didn't get around to reading the rest of the sentence..."
Then they came for those whose Digitla SLRs did not click when taking a picture through a 600mm telephoto lens, and I did not speak up because I did not own a 600mm telephoto lens.
50/50 is the worst possible mix, short of 50%-1 for two parties and a couple of independents. Then it's the independents who run the government. I nice mix would be 30/30/30 of major parties (Democrats, Republicans, Greens), with a handful of those nasty religious types who feel that it is their duty to interfere with the Government, and suddenly you don't even need the Reps and the Dems to agree with each other on anything anymore, and the independents can't hold the Government hostage.
I think you'll find that iiNet are being sued because the movie studios are the ones motivating Sen. Conroy to persist with the stupid clean feed idea.
"If only you had Cleanfeed," the studios will claim, "your customers wouldn't be able to pirate our movies!"
So now if you object to the Cleanfeed, not only are you a child abuser, you're a movie pirate too!
I've tried Ubuntu. The little niggly details keep me coming back to my MacBook. Little things like the damn Ubuntu laptop won't go to sleep and stay asleep until I wake it. Little things like taking twice as long to boot. Little things like the WiFi indicator not lighting up when the WiFi radio is turned on. Little things like the UI being loosely based on Mac OS X in the first place, except with much less UI consistency. It's the little things that drive you mad. I can go quite happily wearing last year's fashions for a decade, but dammit you put a pebble in my shoe I'm going to get cranky aren't I?
I'll simply keep buying Macs as I always have, and I'll keep not buying prerecorded movies like I always have. Don't shoot the messenger, and all that.
Mac OS X has supported more mouse buttons than Windows for a long time. Your joke is old and sad and needs to be taken out behind the shed and shot.
XP maybe. Vista is the HDCP flagship.
Just be aware that while Hitler wrote the first sentence, the rest of that quote is from a Rabbi writing a fictional letter by Hitler, writing from the afterlife to his colleague Julius Streicher.
One version of this letter is published at www.aapsonline.org/brochures/lapin.htm.
If iiNet shows how useless filtering really is in a real-world environment as opposed to a sterile lab environment, Conroy will just claim that they weren't trying hard enough. Especially given iiNet's public attitude towards filtering, Conroy's argument will simply be that iiNet set out to sabotage the project. Mandatory Internet censorship is going to happen here, like it or lump it.
Of course, you know the way that it will happen is that the single-player mode will work up until the final encounter, at which point it's revealed that you should have paid the $20 to unlock that NPC way back at the beginning of the game because they're pivotal to the successful completion of the final encounter. Can you imagine having to pay $20 to unlock Imoen or Jeheira in the Baldur's Gate series?